From The Pilot:
By Steve Bouser - Wednesday, August 11, 2010
What's in a word? Plenty. In America, we're getting ready to tear ourselves apart over a single one of them: "marriage."
It's a crying shame - all the more so because there is, or was, an easy way around this seeming impasse. All it would take is just a little more give-and-take and less stridency on both sides. (Why does everything these days have to come down to "sides"?)
All this is going to sound a bit familiar to those who may remember that I wrote about this back in 2005 and touched on aspects of it again early last year - both times when the gay marriage issue had previously reared its head. But the question has roared forth with such force and potential divisiveness that I can't resist having another (no doubt futile) go at it.
The matter has taken on its current urgency, of course, because of events unfolding in California. First the state legislature legalized gay marriage. Then the people voted to outlaw it again. Now a federal judge has overturned the results of that referendum. And soon the whole polarizing, seesawing mess will land in the lap of the U.S. Supreme Court, and that's all we'll be hearing yelled about for months on Fox News and MSNBC.
It never had to come to this. And it wouldn't have if legislatures and courts everywhere had listened to a bit of advice the first time it was offered. Simply put, it goes like this: Government at all levels should get out of the marriage business altogether.
I know. It sounds crazy. But hold on a minute.
When Americans are asked by pollsters what they think of "gay marriage," most have problems with it. Marriage, they feel, is supposed to be between a man and a woman. That's not just what the Bible says. It's also what the dictionary says.
But in many surveys, if you ask those same Americans whether same-sex couples should have the same rights as heterosexual ones when it comes to things like insurance and joint tax returns and hospital visitation rights and inheritance laws, most answer yes. Though the concept of equal rights passes muster, the sticking point is often that pesky "m" word. Folks just can't get around it. I'm not sure I blame them.
I first got off on this subject five years ago, when Paul Loscocco, an unknown state legislator in Massachusetts, achieved his 15 minutes of fame after offering an idea that I thought was brilliant in its simplicity.
"I am proposing," he said, "that everybody - gay or straight - gets the same civil union, recognized by the commonwealth with the same package of rights and benefits."
If a couple then wanted to get "married," they would have to go see their preacher, priest, rabbi, imam - whatever, as long as they could find one willing to bless the union and perform the ceremony. The state would have no more official interest in that, Loscocco said, than it now does in whether you've been baptized confirmed or bar-mitzvahed
Asked what the legislature would then call the relationship formerly known as marriage, he famously replied, "I don't care. We could call it liverwurst."
All it would take, it seems to me, would be for gay and lesbian couples to take one small step back from the brink, resolve to take less of an in-your-face approach, and embrace Loscocco's fundamental compromise. It would still allow them to join in an officially recognized union, called liverwurst or whatever, according them the same rights as everybody else. They could then drive over to their church, get "married," and refer to themselves as that for the rest of their lives, and nobody in the government would take official notice or care.
In reality, I'm sure it's too late for any of that at this point. That train has left the station. Massachusetts ignored Loscocco and became the first state in the union to legalize gay marriage, and several other states have since joined it. I imagine they all will get caught up in the looming Supreme Court brouhaha, and our already dangerously fragmenting society will split along yet another fault line.
Too bad. But it didn't need to happen.
Steve Bouser is editor of The Pilot. Contact him at (910) 693-2470 or by e-mail at sbouser@thepilot.com.
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